Sunday, March 6, 2011

Before and After: Nautical Chart Bench

Last summer I found this old piano bench at a yard sale Best Friend and I stopped at on the way to a class.

They only wanted $2 for it!SOLD!!!

It’s been sitting in my garage ever since waiting for me to find some inspiration (and time) to work on it.

Donna’s Saturday Night Special challenge for benches was the kick start I needed! I wanted a little shelf in from of one of my living room windows to set some plants. And this was the perfect size.

The hardest part of this project was deciding what I wanted to do with it! Second hardest part was digging it out of the “project pile” in my garage.

After a good cleaning up, sanding and more cleaning, I masked off the top of the bench and painted the legs and bracing. I used a mistint paint (Tavistock Green) from Walmart off of my paint shelf.

Once the legs were dry, I touched up the stain on the bench top. Then I waited for that to dry.

Now the fun part. Himself works on a ship in Alaska’s Bering Sea. When the ship’s charts are updated, they throw out the old ones. And that sweet husband of mine grabs them up for me. I have all sorts of projects lined up that will use those.

And for this project, I decopodged a portion of a chart to the top of the little bench. This was a really old chart and I love the coloring used on it. It looks antique.

Finally I did a bit of distressing to make it look like it had been around a half of forever.

The best way to be able to familiarize your path would be with the use of a map. Any fisherman knows that a nautical chart can be their best friend when they are out on the sea. A nautical chart basically becomes the eyes of fisherman as they are graphic representations of the maritime area as well as the nearby coastal regions.

Thank you for coming walkabout with me! I enjoy comments and will try to answer questions quickly if I have a way to reply to you. Sorry I have had to put the word verification back on... the spam jerks (especially the Serbian ones... yeh, I check your addys) have been overloading me lately.

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About Me

Hello and welcome! This is where I share a little bit of my adventures I have in this big beautiful world. The sweet babies I’m holding is my niece Little Bird and nephew Little Hoss. She turned 3 in August and Little Hoss was 2 June. They are one of my adventures… I’m an auntie now. Oh the fun we’ll have!
I am also a wife, a Christ follower, a traveler, a cook, a photographer, a student of new and interesting things, a mini philanthropist, and a pursuer of dreams.